Apocalypse: The Second World War

2009
Apocalypse: The Second World War

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Aggression (1933–1939) Sep 08, 2009

Colourised footage of Hitler as he visits the Austrian village where he grew up, see the heart-felt good-byes as French soldiers leave loved ones at Gare de l’Est train station in Paris and civilians. Hitler continues his conquest of Europe by invading Holland and Belgium.

EP2 Crushing Defeat (1939–1940) Sep 08, 2009

The British troops hastily evacuate from the beaches at Dunkirk, France, but are forced to abandon kilometres of precious military vehicles and equipment. Heart-rending footage captures the plight of thousands of French civilians as they flee from the Nazis, as well as home movies taken by Londoners as they dig out from daily bombings.

EP3 Shock (1940–1941) Sep 15, 2009

Polish prisoners and Jews are forced into slave labour to complete Nazi building projects. The Italian army is in disarray so Hitler dispatches one of his best generals to Libya. The Afrika Korps fry eggs on the surfaces of their tanks amidst the blistering desert sands of North Africa. Shock includes vivid colourised footage of the battle for the Soviet Union as the Germans struggle toward Moscow in the brutal Russian winter.

EP4 World Ablaze (1941-1942) Sep 15, 2009

America joins the war as the conflict rages in South-East Asia, North Africa and Russia. The Allied forces are unable to slow the furious progress of the Japanese army through South-East Asia. Even India and Australia are at risk. The Nazis instigate The Final Solution.

EP5 The Noose (1942-1943) Sep 22, 2009

The turning of the war against Germany, with Allied victory at El Alamein and Russian triumph at Stalingrad. In the North Atlantic, the Allies make progress in reducing the threat from German U-boats. Inside Hitler's Germany the SS gain more power, and in southern Europe the Allies fight their way though Italy.

EP6 Inferno (1944-1945) Sep 22, 2009

Witness the D-Day landings and the liberation of Paris. In the east the Soviets liberate Auschwitz and fight their way to the heart of Berlin. Germany finally surrenders and Japan fights on until the 2 atom bombs are dropped.
9| 0h30m| TV-PG| en| More Info
Released: 08 September 2009 Ended
Producted By: National Geographic
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.france.tv/france-5/apocalypse-la-2e-guerre-mondiale/
Synopsis

A six-part French documentary about the Second World War composed exclusively of actual footage of the war as filmed by war correspondents, soldiers, resistance fighters and private citizens. The series is shown in color, with the black and white footage being fully colorized, save for some original color footage. The only exception to the treatment are most Holocaust scenes, which are presented in the original black and white.

... View More
Stream Online

The movie is currently not available onine

Director

Producted By

National Geographic

Trailers & Images

Reviews

Thomas The footage is extremely nice quality and not to mentioned with colors and everything. Sadly it has been made widescreen which means some of the footage has been cut off, rather than just preserving the 4:3 aspect ratio.That aside, it's also a very informative documentary that manages to explain World War 2 pretty well despite just being 6 episodes. It may focus a lot on Europe but it still comes around the other theaters well.However it's also blatantly obviously biased. I'm not a Nazi or communists but the documentary was obviously anti-soviet/Stalinist and didn't really maintain a very neutral look at the war, which documentaries should if you ask me. Non of the actions committed by Germans that are shown in the documentary is anything but "pure evil" and non of the western allies ever did anything wrong. A good example is the utter destruction of Germany just being seen as an absolute necessity from the documentaries point of view without putting the slightest critique towards the actions committed by the Allies. Every German soldier portrayed in the documentary is meant to look as evil and barbaric as possible.The documentary even manages to sneak in the ridiculous claims about Germans making lampshades of human skin, shrinking heads and whatnot.But this is what you can expect from documentaries like this, I suppose. I mainly just watched it for the nice visuals.
Ilan_Voyager Henri De Turenne and Daniel Costelle have a 40 years old record of documentaries about the WWII period. As it's made by French filmmakers for a French TV it seems normal that the documentary emphasizes on the French point of view. The excellent documentaries about the same subject by the BBC are also "biased"...No history work can pretend to be perfectly neutral, or it would be a long list of raw meaningless facts.Another comment makes the assertion that "A greater number of Frenchmen bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies." Thats seems a pretty foolish assertion if you do very simple maths on the proved ciphers:-Resistance; At least 220 000 people (the historian Paxton estimates the numbers between 200 000 and 400 000). Not all were bearing arms as the 100 000 FFI in 1944, but all worked against the Nazis. -Italy Campaign 1943 130 000 French soldiers (American statistics). -At the time of Normandy Invasion 500 000 French regular soldiers (plus the 100 000 FFI). In May 1945 not far from the million...On the other side: - Milice (paramilitary organization) 25 000.(35 000 including part-time members and non-combatants). - In the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS; 7340 in 1944. Lets put at max 20 000 volunteers during all the war, and including the double entries with the Milice.The Alsatian people were drafted in the Wermacht as they were considered as German by the Nazis. So most were not volunteers and cannot be included.So how the pseudo historian has found that "A greater number of Frenchmen bore arms for the Axis than for the Allies."???
djeezman It is a France 2 documentary and as such very french biased.Many french sensitive issues (Vichy.. only the top a disgrace, or whole french populations under Vichy a disgrace ?! ), liberation of France by active troops in terms of men, material..how much (or rather how little) was french, etc. are left under the carpet.All the world-war issues are looked upon with french interest/viewpoint..if there isn't one, then there is no attention to it or only as a 5 second footnote (Fights in Norway? Holland ? Belgium ? Convoy war at Atlantic ? Balkan fights Tito resistance, Soviet fights in Balkan countries ? MarketGarden ? Japan's fights and occupation in china,New Guinea,etc).However french issues which are marginal to the outside world are given broad attention (french ministers crisis 1940, negotiations Roosevelt with Gaulle en Vichy favoured representative in 1943, Bir Hakeim stand, LeClerc background (ahem Zjoekov's background ? Monty's Background? Alexander's background?), Indochine taken over by Japan, French resistance actions (no resistance elsewhere?), De Gaulle's return in France and focus on his political problems).Like before-mentioned text: Many films have been aired before..only a few are rare (from French sources). All are coloured in, which gives it a special touch-but not all are coloured in thoroughly (only face one colour, one colour for uniform, one colour for bushes, one colour for ground).It's nice to see, and it keeps you captivated...but it is not THE best documentary, and certainly not "neutral"(unbiased).
R. Ignacio Litardo "Perfection is rare to find" is the favourite phrase of an aesthetic surgeon. This is just it.The text is superb. Informative, NEUTRAL, without concessions for any party, and with a subtler enough message of hope. The images are really unbelievable. Also unusual. If you think you've seen them all and docus on wars bore you, think again. Kassovitz's voice is just what's needed for the job: enthusiastic and yet dry enough so you get "just the facts". If you ever look for a good music equipments, when you read reviews you'll find that one of the best compliments writers do is: "doesn't get in between you and the music". You don't "notice" the direction, editor, the "author" who made this monumental work. Even with touchy topics like the Holocaust, they just deliver the facts. Their involvement is obvious, but they always give us the facts first. Whether you are cramming for a general education examination or if you want to be a bit less ignorant on probably the most relevant topic of the XX century, you'll find no better documentary. Engaging, painful to watch at times, showing us the consequences on the peasants and the "little people" as well as the general's feats and whims, this saga strikes the right balance at everything. From the Blitzkreig to the V2, from Normandie to the unlikely allies the Nazis got from the dominated Slav countries (and how they mistreated them for "not being Aryan", everything is here, and more. Even Hitler's madness. Just one example: him calling Churchill and Roosevelt "jewizizing" after another military setback. Surely history is staggering enough: the Islamists were one of the unlikely willful allies of the Nazis, "combating the common Zionist enemy".Words are not enough to describe the "thirst for nothingness" Hitler saw on the world, Japanese's pride, American altruism, British flame, the French way of failing so much, for so long, Italian's mistrust of government, Soviet power and blindness, German efficiency in devising the cruelest weapon (i.e. the mines with a "click") as the Berliner. performing yet another perfect rehearsal. If there's just one thing I'd have liked is less bias for the tiniest "heroic French action" completely irrelevant for the course of the war, and absent from any history manuals. Time being a scarce resource, it'd been useful to cover a bit more of the Pacific front, barely mentioned. It's also a bit Eurocentric in scope, but I suppose that's the price to pay. Nobody is perfect after all :(.Whatever is to be learned from wars must be here. Whatever can be learned is never enough, never too late, never enough. Churchill's famous prose give this documentary two of the most memorable moments, in which it was difficult for me not to cry. People may not learn, again. Yes, a documentary on such hay-necked topic can still do that to you.